How Facebook's 'Like' Button Is Taking Over the Internet

Facebook's proliferating "like" button, which seeks to integrate social
networking with news sharing, does not appear to have been slowed by concerns about privacy.
Just a week after launching the tool, Facebook says it now appears on
over 50,000 Web sites and has been viewed over a billion times, marking a
major victory for Facebook's expanding control over the Internet. How
did they do it?

Very Easy to Integrate Erictric's Betrand is impressed.
"Facebook has made it relatively easy for any website owner to integrate
any of the social plugins. The process usually involves just copying
and pasting a few lines of codes. These figures are definitely nothing
short of impressive, given that many users are still adjusting to the
new changes. We can expect those numbers to grow exponentially in the
coming weeks."

Facebook Addresses Privacy Concerns On the
official Facebook developer's blog, Sandra Liu Huang says their success
comes from "engaging users in a frictionless experience without
requiring them to share any personal information." She addresses the
privacy concerns, writing, "Unified data permissions dialog and new data
policies [are] Giving users more control and greater transparency over
their data, and making integrating with Facebook Platform easier for
developers."

Owning Social Media Across the Web
TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid whistles, "This growth is important, because as more sites integrate these social
widgets, Facebook will increasingly own social interaction across the
web. We've also confirmed that Facebook met and surpassed Mark
Zuckerberg's prediction that Facebook users would hit
see the 'Like' button 1 billion times in its first 24 hours of
existence. Not a bad start."

Putting Itself at the Center of the Internet Mashable's Ben Parr says it's all about Facebook's Open
Graph initiative. "Last week, Facebook unveiled the Open Graph API and
social plugins during its F8 conference in San Francisco. The complex
protocol and API create a more personalized web browsing experience, all
through Facebook. Social plugins in particular allow users to interact
with other websites (for example, 'Liking' them) without even logging
in. ... Social plugins are just the first step in Facebook's ambitious
plan to become the central nexus of the web. With this kind of adoption
success, it's tough to imagine a scenario where Facebook doesn't take
over the web."

Why It Will Defeat Digg Softpedia's Lucien Parfeni predicts, "The Like button is pretty
innocuous at first sight, but the adoption rate has been much bigger
than what most people expected. In a sense, it could be compared to the
Digg or Twitter buttons that are all over the web, enabling you to share
a link with the world. But the Like button is more than that, it is
deeply integrated with your profile and helps Facebook get a very
accurate reading on the type of stuff you are interested in."